The new world had come into existence!  Renascence, the lucky heir, gathered the ripe fruit from the tree of art which had blossomed so marvellously.  God was no longer sought in the depth of the soul, all emotion was projected into the world of sense.  Churches were built, not from an irresistible impulse, but as store-houses of the pictures which were painted with amazing rapidity.  The fundamental principle of personality was externalised in the Renascence.  Vanity and boasting, traces of which frequently appeared in the age of chivalry, grew exuberantly.  No less manifest than the incomparable genius and esprit of the heyday of the Renascence—­although far less frequently commented on—­was the desire to be conspicuous, to shine, to display wealth and learning.  The essence of personality, instead of being sought in the soul, was sought in outward magnificence.  As a matter of fact, the much extolled Renascence only perfected the various branches of art and poetry, which had sprung up in the period of the Crusades.  The latter was the time of the planting of the tree of European culture; all that followed was merely its growth and ramification.  Only exact science had its origin in the Renascence, and this fact, in historical perspective, must be regarded as the supreme glory of this period.  However paradoxical it may sound—­the “impersonal” science is the perfection of the European system of individualism, its most potent weapon for taking spiritual possession of the world and all that the world contains.  The consciousness of personality had to permeate the whole soul before it could recover its external function:  organic existence justified by itself.  While art borrows from nature and mankind all that we ourselves deem beautiful, perfect, valuable, and imposes on the world a man-made law—­science strives to understand all things and all creatures according to the law which dominates them; it strives to comprehend nature and humanity—­even where they are foreign and hostile—­not according to human values, but according to their inherent nature—­and this is only possible when the individuality of all things is respected.  The method of science has slowly become the perfect weapon by whose aid Europe has attained the mastery of the world; it rests on the fundamental feeling for the material, and is capable of confronting the “I” with the whole system of natural phenomena, the “not-I,” and expresses the final victory of comprehending spirit over matter.

CHAPTER II

THE DEIFICATION OF WOMAN

(THE FIRST FORM OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM)

(a) The Love of the Troubadours

In the long chapter on the Birth of Europe, I have attempted to bring corroborative evidence from all sides in support of my contention that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed the birth and gradual development of a new value of the highest importance:  the value of individuality, impersonated by the citizen of Europe.  We are now prepared to realise the psychological importance and the importance for progress of one of the greatest results of this new development—­the spiritual love of man for woman.  From this subject, the specific subject of my book, I shall not again digress.